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Hours before Pope Francis’ visit to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on Tuesday, a Femen protester stripped to the waist and jumped onto the main altar of the town’s cathedral on Monday afternoon waving a European Union flag and multi-colored streamers. She danced on the altar for a full minute before running to the cathedral’s exit, vanishing among the crowd on the cathedral square. The woman’s identity has not been disclosed, nor has she been interrogated or arrested by the police.

The topless protester had painted slogans on her naked torso: “Pope is not a politician” and “Anti-Secular Europe.” Femen’s website called her a “Sextremist” who was attracting attention to the European flag’s new status as a “symbol of the alliance between European institutions and the Catholic Church.”

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The European Parliament is “sacrificing secularism” in order to recover some popularity in the present crisis of European institutions, says the communiqué on Femen’s website, accusing it of condoning the “injustices and crimes committed by the Church against women for thousands of years”: “Less radical than his predecessors, pope Francis is slowly positioning himself as a political rock-star while giving the Vatican more credit on the international scene. However we do not forget this fascist ‘State’ got its independence from Mussolini. (…) While trying to appear ‘progressive’ on certain subjects, pope Francis simultaneously encourages anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti-euthanasia lobbies. Despite appearances, Pope Francis’ Vatican is as retrograde and dangerous as it ever was. (…) Let’s take their churches by force! Religion has nothing to do with politics!”

The desecration of the Strasbourg cathedral by the topless Femen was evidently organized well in advance, in connivance with the media. Several dozen professional press photographers were present while the woman danced on the altar and, far from attempting to stop this attack on Catholics and Christians, took hundreds of shots of the event, which was also filmed by the local press. Videos and photographs of the act were posted on the Internet on media sites within minutes of the event.

The French Interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, “firmly condemned the incident,” saying it “gives witness of a desire to shock the faithful who were going to worship and, more generally, the community of French Catholics, on the eve of Pope Francis’ visit to Strasburg.” The action “constitutes an outrage and a provocation,” the minister added, saying the “lay Republic recognizes every citizen’s right to believe or not to believe, guaranteeing all believers’ liberty to worship according to their faith in a peaceful and dignified way.” He condemned a “context of growing intolerance.”

Previous desecrations by Femen activists in Catholic churches and cathedrals have provoked less firm reactions from the French government. However, the minister did not say the woman was “wanted by the police” and would be severely punished, as happens when anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish acts take place in France.

Given the specific framework of Church and State relations in the erstwhile province of Alsace, of which Strasbourg is the capital, Monday’s topless protester probably went too far, even by the French secular Republic’s standards. Alsace was under German occupation in 1905 when France officially declared full separation of the Church and State: when Alsace was returned to France in 1918, it was still under the regime of the “Concordat” concluded with Pope Pius VII by Napoleon in 1801. This means there are still official ties between the Catholic Church and the State in Alsace.

Moreover, contrary to the penal code applicable in the rest of France, Alsatian laws, which have not been revoked although dating from the German occupation, specifically condemn attacks against established cults and still lists “blasphemy” as a punishable act against “Christian denominations or religious communities” and “disturbing religious ceremonies”: this carries a prison sentence of up to three years.

The French Christian defense society, “Alliance générale contre le racisme et pour le respect de l’identité française et chrétienne” or AGRIF, condemned the desecration and has decided to file a penal lawsuit against the protester.